Britain's Clown Shortage

Posted by Alex in Politics on March 6, 2009 at 4:29 pm

The British Home Office’s effort to crack down on illegal immigrations has an unintended consequences of sort: Britain is experiencing a clown shortage!

"My season started in February," says Martin Lacey, owner of the Great British Circus, "and I’ve got comedy acrobats stranded in the Ukraine, and Mongolian horse riders who were refused their visas in Ulan Batur." The holes in his lineup have forced Lacey to draft last-minute substitutes. "Our Mexican clown is stuck in Mexico, so we’ve got a trapeze artist pretending to be a stooge just to get everybody out of trouble," he says. "It’s a mess."

And it’s totally incompatible with the needs of Britain’s circus sector. According to Malcolm Clay, secretary of the Association of Circus Proprietors of Great Britain, British circus schools don’t produce artists at an acceptable standard, largely because their students refine skills like tightrope walking or fire-breathing as a hobby, not as part of a life-long career. As a result, British circuses rely on artists from countries with long-established histories of state-sponsored circus schools: they call on Argentina and Colombia for their renowned high wire acts, China and North Korea for acrobats, and Mongolia and Russia for horse riders. (Interestingly, they don’t need to import bearded ladies.)

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Australian Government Ruled that Identical Twins Aren't Related

Posted by Alex in Crime & Law on January 26, 2009 at 11:51 am

This is the sort of thing that only government bureaucracy can come up with: Australian immigration authorities have decided that Rosabelle Glasby couldn’t bring her identical twin sister into the country because … they’re not related!

Adopted by different families shortly after their birth in Malaysia, Mrs Glasby and Dorothy Loader were separated for almost 50 years before finally meeting last September.

But now Mrs Glasby, from Margaret River, is facing an uphill battle to be permanently reunited with her twin, who lives in Malaysia. In a letter to Mrs Glasby last month, DIAC state director Paul Farrell explained that despite the circumstances, the present laws meant Ms Loader would not be eligible for family migration.

"Under Migration Law where the legal relationship between a child and his/her birth parents has been severed by adoption, the legal relationship between the child and his/her birth siblings is also severed,” he said.

"It therefore does not appear that your twin sister would be eligible for a permanent visa under the Family Stream of the Migration Program.”

Mrs Glasby said she was heartbroken that her long-lost twin did not qualify as family. "We’re identical twin sisters _ we’re the same egg,” she said. “Just because we got adopted into different families they say they don’t consider us related. It’s hard to get anyone more related to me.”

Link – via Arbroath

 
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A Graphic Representation of Immigration to the United States, 1820-1970

Posted by John Farrier in Everything Else on December 12, 2008 at 9:53 pm

No, this is not a political post. It’s just a cool video graphically showing streams of immigration from different parts of the world to the U.S. Nice swirly colors.

(Video Link)

Via Glenn Reynolds

 
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